About this Episode
In this episode of the Agency Profit Podcast, Marcel is joined once again by Kristen Kelly to unpack one of the most persistent friction points inside service businesses: the handoff between sales and delivery. Drawing on her experience working with agencies of all sizes, Kristen breaks down the all too familiar pattern of projects kicking off with a signed contract but no real context, delivery teams guessing at what was promised, and loosely defined scopes that quietly erode margins. She and Marcel explore how misaligned incentives, weak scoping and pricing frameworks, and inconsistent data structures across tools turn every new project into a game of telephone for clients and a source of internal tension between sales, account management, and project teams. From practical fixes like sharing recorded sales calls and involving account managers in late stage sales conversations, to more structural shifts like separating price from scope and using reporting as a forcing function for better alignment, this episode gives agency leaders a clear roadmap to tighten handoffs, improve the client experience, and protect profitability.
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Points of Interest
- 00:00 – 01:31 – Introduction: Marcel and Kristen open with a relatable riff on Notion and AI features before framing the core issue of the episode: messy handoffs between sales, account management, and delivery in service businesses.
- 01:31 – 03:14 – Why Handoffs Are a Universal Agency Problem: Kristen explains why sales-to-delivery handoff issues show up in agencies of every size and maturity and highlights their downstream impact on profitability and operational sanity.
- 03:14 – 05:34 – Common Symptoms of Broken Handoffs: Kristen outlines key symptoms such as work starting in a vacuum after the contract is signed, deliverable-only briefs, and delivery teams missing the strategic goals and context from sales conversations.
- 05:34 – 07:28 – Client Game of Telephone and Disjointed Data: Marcel describes how clients end up repeating themselves to every new team member and how poor internal communication leads to scattered information, inconsistent naming, and misaligned expectations across tools.
- 07:28 – 10:34 – Incentive Misalignment Between Sales and Delivery: Kristen breaks down how quota driven sales teams and risk conscious project managers operate with different goals, creating tension when there is no shared understanding of scope, clarity, or repeatability.
- 10:34 – 13:35 – Consequences for Client Trust and Profitability: They explore how early missteps fuel buyer’s remorse, create invisible client scorecards on trust, and generate internal gaps between what was promised, what is being delivered, and how profitable work actually is.
- 13:35 – 17:29 – Ingredients of a Strong Handoff: Kristen shares practical tactics such as transferring rich context, sharing sales call recordings with the full delivery team, and having the future account lead sit in on the final sales call to align expectations before the handoff.
- 17:29 – 20:20 – Separating Scope From Price and Avoiding Bad Math: Marcel goes on a rant about the dangerous habit of turning project price into hours by dividing it by an arbitrary rate and explains why scope, time, cost, and margin must be defined separately from the client facing price.
- 20:20 – 24:40 – Structural Alignment Across CRM, PM, and Accounting: Marcel highlights the need for a consistent schema for how projects are represented across contracts, invoicing, project management, and time tracking so that reporting can tie expectations back to actual performance.
- 24:40 – 27:16 – Kickoffs, Assets, and Tools That Improve Handoffs: Kristen covers how internal kickoffs, sales call recordings, and structured client intake tools can give creative and delivery teams the context they need while keeping meetings focused and efficient.
- 27:16 – 31:18 – Using Reporting as a Forcing Function for Alignment: They introduce the idea of expectations versus actuals reporting and the agency profitability flywheel as a way to expose process gaps, bring sales and delivery into the same conversations, and drive better decision making.
- 31:18 – 36:24 – Q4 Planning, Cross Team Empathy, and Next Steps: Kristen and Marcel close with advice to use annual planning cycles to realign services, pricing, and scope and encourage leaders to create empathy between sales and delivery by having teams observe each other’s work and “watch game tape” together.
Show Notes
- Connect with Kristen via LinkedIn
- Free Agency Toolkit
- Parakeeto Foundations Course
- Free access to our Model Platform
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